And can be pre-ordered with a Parallels Desktop 8 order between now and Halloween.

Per MacNN, Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac will ship the first week of September according to its parent company. One of the primary features will be optimization for OS X Mavericks, which has yet to be released, but has been in beta for some time and may be launched as soon as next month. At the moment, Desktop 9 is itself in beta testing.

Other enhancements will include copy and paste support for OS X virtual machines, and a better Coherence View, which gives Windows apps the appearance of running natively on a Mac. Parallels has also made improvements to creating and customizing keyboard shortcuts, and installing Windows on a Mac without a DVD drive — important because Apple has been stripping optical drives from the Mac lineup.

Customers buying Desktop 8 between today and October 31st will be eligible for a free upgrade to Desktop 9, so long as they have a dated proof of purchase. The former retails for US$80 new, or US$50 as an upgrade from Desktop 6 or 7.

Check the manufacturing date on your iMac, it may be eligible for a replacement graphics card.

Per AppleInsider, addressing complaints from owners, Apple has decided to institute a replacement program for graphics cards used in specific 27-inch iMac models sold between May 2011 and October 2012.

According to a document on Apple’s Support webpage, the AMD Radeon HD 6970M video cards shipped with certain 27-inch iMac desktop configurations would fail, causing the display to “appear distorted, white or blue with vertical lines.” In some cases, the screen would simply go black.

Models covered in the replacement program include high-end “mid-2011” 27-inch iMacs with 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 or 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processors. The all-in-ones first hit store shelves in May 2011 and remained on sale until the current ultra thin iMacs debuted in October 2012.

Apple will replace failed video cards free of charge for up to three years after the initial purchase date. In addition, people who may have paid for repair or replacement associated with the issue can seek a refund.

Those affected by the issue can take their iMac in for evaluation at the Genius Bar of a local Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. If those services are unavailable, owners are instructed to call Apple Technical Support for other further options.

If you’ve seen this issue on your end, please let us know in the comments.

On Friday, Mozilla.org released version 23.0.1 of its Firefox web browser. The new version, a 44.4 megabyte download via MacUpdate, adds the following fixes and changes:
– [Fixed] Spellchecking broken with non-ASCII characters in profile path.